Istkalen Information Service: An open letter from a Northerner
For the longest time, we of the North felt as though we were doomed. Our country was forced, by elites high on crack cocaine, into a war virtually no one wanted; we then saw ourselves plunged into an occupation, ruled by an authority that seemed not to care about how we actually lived but rather about what it wanted to force on us. They claimed to want to make the country more stable, to make it more sane, and indeed we saw some virtue in this - but in the end we saw this less as an actual attempt to help the country than to forcibly Westernize it. The Republic gave us a five-branch system; they, however, imposed on us a three-branch system. That was the first sign.
There is an alleged constitution that has been circulating, written in almost archaic language - a constitution that it is said they would force on us. It is a constitution which ignores Istkalener history to impose a constitution that seems to be directly taken from some other country - perhaps it was proposed by some radical Reitzmics in some long forgotten past. Istkalen, while not until relatively recently united, has had a long constitutional history, a rich tradition, if flawed, to draw from; the constitution that they seemed to want to impose on us, however, ignored all of this for what we believed to be Reitzmic constitutional history, Reitzmic culture. That was the second sign.
There were rumors of much worse. Of looting and raping in the countryside; of miners shot to death for the crime of protesting against the seizures. We did not want to believe it; but still, we were fearful. So many were coming forwards and saying these things, it all seemed terribly true to us all. We were fearful that it would happen to us; that the soldiers that seemed to stand at every corner would suddenly thrust themselves upon us, killing and stealing and defiling.
It was around that time that we remember the radio beginning to shout in the language of nationalism; it told us that the Vards were animals, the Reitzmics schemers. It fit with what we were hearing, but it also gave us hope - it told us that we would prevail, that we were better, that we were a chosen people, that we were protected and blessed, that the Vards and the Reitzmics would eventually fall away under our might, if we chose to rebel. It fit with what we were hearing, it assuaged us. We thought that we would not stand beneath them; the radio told us that we could, and in that assurance we were happy.
People did struggle; we sought to protect ourselves. We took hope in nonsense because it was all we had. We wore the cardboard boxes, we wore the tomato paste, we danced and screamed in the streets, because it was all the only power that we felt we could have. We had no weapons, no credible voice abroad; we had only that, we felt. We did not care about how we looked, we did not care about the message that was sent; we only reveled in the power we felt this nonsense gave us.
Things seemed relatively hopeful, then. We were still governed by the People's Committees, by extension our Republic; the occupiers did not interfere with the functioning of the indigenous police. Kerel, then Ikomar; they held genuine power, and seemed to be working as hard as they could to preserve our independence. We believed that, together, led by the Republic and fighting as we did, we would quickly prevail and be freed, and then return to our ordinary lives.
Then came the 26th of May, the beginning of hell, when fear overcame us and the country fell truly into darkness. The Reitzmic military arrested virtually all of Istkalen's politicians, major technocrats, and prominent social or cultural figures, all of whom had previously sat on the National Assembly. 739 people gone that day, artists, scientists, activists, journalists, lawyers, doctors; economists and sociologists, agronomists and biologists; even simple farmers, craftspeople, and industrial workers. THey remain in prison, six months later; everyone awaits their release. The country was left headless with their arrests. For those abroad: imagine if your parliament, along with the heads of your major trade and employers' unions, all of your most prominent artists, most of the leaders and deputy leaders of your political parties, your major religious leaders, the most educated of your country, the most prominent of your professors and scientists. and the directors and most prominent journalists and columnists of your major news media were suddenly taken into custody, disappearing seemingly off the face of the Earth. All replaced with an opaque, incompetent, foreign entity which does not understand how you live your lives, or for that matter anything about your history, all the while stealing from your people, looting your country's national resources and selling them for low prices, while you yourself feel completely helpless, terrified beyond all words.
Oh, yes, there might have been others. Not many, however; most were dead, killed by the Social Democrats, extremely ill from 18 years of inhumane detention and then death marches during the short war, or simply discredited for being collaborators. We had very few capable people at the time; and in an instant they had been carried off. Those who were left went underground; they were terrified that they, too, would be arrested. We had essentially been beheaded by the Reitzmic military.
There is no country in the world which I think would react rationally or sanely to such an event. You all lambast us for our behavior; but I ask you, would any of you have responded any differently, given the situation?
The country colllapsed into insanity; various people tried to form new governments. We ourselves took faith in the radio; we intensified what we had done. It made us feel powerful, as I said, made us feel as though we had a chance. What other option did we have, anyways, our political leadership arrested? The Head of State was the only who was still free, and he was in Spain.
We saw indirect elections in June, and our hope rose again, but not much. We expected other arrests soon; we continued as we did, trying to get them out. We had no faith in the new National Assembly; we had faith only in ourselves, in the radio and the power we thought we had.
Hope began to pick up again weeks later; the central state was trying to calm things down. It said that demonstrating our sanity was the only way to oust the J-TAI, to liberate ourselves. It was at that time that some were becoming well enough to speak and to lead - Koline, Isteresskemar, even the current prime minister. We listened again, we obeyed them again, acting against those who did not, who went and supported the occupiers. But there were issues; it was then that the erraticism also began. Changing of names, deportation, renaming of institutions, declarations of the nonexistence or existence of whole peoples - this began in that time. We were hearing news of plans for liberal democracy, for a more liberal economy. WE were scared; things were changing so quickly, suddenly, erratically, and not in a direction which benefited us.
We continued as we did, dancing and screaming. Dancing and screaming was all that we could do, as I wrote.
Then came the edicts of Koline,and that was the end. The woman was obviously going senile, so old and ill she still was; it was intolerable.
The committees revolted, and it was then that we saw the crux of our power. We thought our dancing, our screaming, our chanting and our wearing of cardboard boxes, was doing something; that now, we were seeing its fruits. We pledged loyalty to the new Imperial Realm of Istkalen because we thought it would accomplish something.
The state arrested many of us, and we rose up again. We thought they had turned on us, and we turned ever further to our dancing and our screaming and now, violence, with our bare hands. EVerything and everyone was a plot of the J-TAI to make our nation a blank slate on which they would create a new, Western nation, an imitation of their nations, just as they had had Kerel and Sepp sign blank papers on which they later wrote the terms of surrender according to their own whims.
But things were calming down by then; the EU was invited into our country, and the Reitzmics seemed to be withdrawing. The state had told us again that we were only hampering things, that we were making ourselves look insane, that we would be the ones responsible for the down fall of our nation. They used Kerel's last words as Head of State against us; they said that we had become the unthinking animals, enslaved to the radio. By then it had stopped operating, too, so there was nothing to convince us otherwise.
Slowly, we returned to sanity, and saw what we had done. We were ashamed. Who would not feel ashamed. To dance like that, frothing at the mouth, to scream and throw tomatoes; that is the behavior of the lunatics in the asylums. We are educated people, we were rational people; and yet we were reduced to that. We harmed so much, we brought the greatest shame on our nation.
But what we did was out of fear, not insanity; it was done because we were helpless. Like the terminally ill, we had exhausted all of our other options, and we had no choice but to turn to the most insane of things. The ill turn to homeopathy and naturopathy and traditional medicine, herbs and so on; we turned to religion, to curses and incantations and chanting.
We are a pitiable people, a people who indeed should be ashamed of what we have done; but do not mock us for what we have done. All we did was demonstrate to the rest of the world how humanity can be corrupted by, what humanity can become, in the face of unimaginable despair and hopelessness.